I’m not arguing the town is right here, but as a manager (in a corporation, not government), I can say that I’ve certainly had incidents that I wish in hindsight were better documented (in the middle of one now, in fact). You deal with a lot of situations every day and you try to create a paper trail for things that will have a longer impact and sometimes you misjudge. In fact, if this was truly the orchestrated campaign that it has been made out to be by the NAACP, I would expect the town would have been more careful in its documentation. Or else they are truly inept at orchestrating as well. Not a case I envy the board to decide – literally he said/she said and then you have to weigh if the allegations if true warrant the treatment.

Thanks, Will, for putting all this time into documenting what’s going on. We may never know the full truth, but you’ve helped us understand what we can.

As a former manager, I’m also well aware of the dearth of documented evidence you might have in these cases. I’ve unfortunately been in Mr. Norris’ situation a couple times in the last 20 years – it is no fun.

For $5860 I did expect a bit more thoroughness and detail from CAI and the Town. There might be mounds of details the public wasn’t privy to but based on last night’s testimony it sounded like a lot of undocumented hearsay.

We have 10 employees collaborating the Town’s narrative, only 3 of which are willing to testify in some detail, 2 of which only by affidavit, leaving only 1, Mr. James, to flesh out some detail directly.

The 2 filing affidavits appear to be testifying about singular incidents. It’s not clear what prompted their recollections but it is clear that neither independently complained prior to the investigation. 1 of the affidavits only relates, 2nd hand, a story about an altercation that almost came to blows between Bigelow and someone else.

In presenting their case, the Town fumbled with dates, mixed up incidents (the EEOC incident on behalf of Bigelow vs. the “Biden” incident of 7/22.

At first the Town says there were two incidents in Greenwood – the 7/22 and something in September which culminated in the firings. Later the Town describes a pattern of escalating incidents between those dates but doesn’t provide any description of those incidents. In two hours I gathered a bit more information than I had before but also was left more perplexed about some of the management decisions/omissions.

That said, Bigelow’s response, that it was all lies, the Town and staff were out to get him – presumably in retaliation for the firing of Harv Howard, the filing of the EEOC grievance, the documentation of safety incidents, his labor organizing efforts – fell a bit flat.

If I was forced to agree on a consolidated narrative it would go something like this…

Bigelow was a good worker. He applied for a position he was well qualified for (by 17 years experience in Burlington), a position his boss endorsed him for, a position he lost due to some wackiness in the review process.

The Town agreed that there was some kind of problem (which the public doesn’t know the details of), they had done another CAI investigation to deal with it but, at the end of the day, still decided to hire a less qualified applicant for the position.

At this point Bigelow files an EEOC complaint and, here’s were I speculate, starts to show his disappointment. I could well understand his disappointment – he did his 2+ years as a collector waiting for a position to open up yet got less than nothing for his patience. To the degree he showed that disappointment – made him show irritation over other issues – we don’t know specifically but I’m convinced that he was upset and showed it a few times. Who wouldn’t understand that?

As you well put it, the “he said/she said” aspect of this case makes it difficult to tease out the truth.

From what was said, what was documented, what was logically established last night,I don’t believe his actions justified his termination but, rather, some level of lesser intervention – corrective action review, lateral movement (if possible), counseling, placement on another route and separation from Clark, etc.

Finally, this does appear to have been an extraordinary turn of events starting with Bigelow’s application for the driver position. As a former manager, I found myself asking numerous times last night, “Why didn’t management do X?” Both Mr. Norris, the new HR head acknowledge some management deficits – if I was on Council, I would expect Town Manager Stancil to explain what corrective actions he was taking to make sure we don’t have a similar chain of failures take place again.